Modem personal computer (PC) systems are used in almost every business, education, and government organization around the world. These computer systems generally include operating systems and application software programs. An operating system provides system-wide management functions and an executing environment for application software programs, each of which performs a particular functionality.
The operating system and the application software programs of a personal computer are often configured according to a user's needs. Such configuration may be stored through a persistent mechanism, such as an on-disk file, so that when the computer is reset or restarted, the configuration settings can be read and the operating system or software applications can run with the stored settings. The user does not have to reconfigure the settings from scratch. However, when the personal computer is replaced or upgraded by another computer system, or when the operating system is changed from one to another, the application software programs and the configuration may be no longer usable and manual processes are often required to carry out such software program reinstallation and configuration for replacing or upgrading the personal computer. Further, when the number of the computers involved is large, which is often the case within a large organization, it may be time-consuming and even impractical to manage such reinstallation or upgrade due to the number of manual processes and operations.
Certain techniques have been developed to assist the user to migrate the configuration and other user information. For example, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2006/0026587 to Lemarroy et al. discloses a system and method that recognizes source and target devices and transfers user profiles, user settings, data, applications, and other information from the source device to the target device. However, such conventional techniques often fail to address issues with migrations in an enterprise environment involving a large number of computer devices and a large number of applications. Further, such conventional techniques often use many computer files and file transfers and fail to incorporate the migration process into enterprise asset management and/or inventory management systems.
Methods and systems consistent with certain features of the disclosed systems are directed to solving one or more of the problems set forth above.